That's fine. I made a different response that wasn't directed at you. You clearly saw this as an attack or challenge of some sort. That's your burden to carry, not mine. Have a nice day.

Actually, my software of choice does allow me to work around the 'laws of UVs'. That wasn't the point or the question. The original poster wanted to know why his textures weren't aligning properly with his UVs. I gave a possible reason based on my understanding of UVs, which you have yet to refute. If you agree with me, then there's no need to argue. If you want to suggest possible workarounds to this problems, I won't stop you. In fact, I encourage you to do so.

You\re missing the main point, which is that UV space will maximize texture size. Regardless of the software or the tricks that you use to bend the rules. I mentioned nothing about unwrapping the UV mesh.

Here's a simple fact that cuts to the heart of the matter: We're dealing with pixels. Lets break it down even further.

You have a UV space of 10 x 10 pixels. Your texture contains 10 x 5 pixels. You MUST fill 10 pixels.

You basically have two options: A) Stretch the pixels, or B) Add placeholders (e.g. white or black pixels) to maintain the ratio, without distorting the texture.

There is no third option. Or rather, if there is, I'd like you to explain it to me. I am an eager and willing student.

I know it seems like we're going around in circles, but I just wanted to put a dot on this point. If you create an image that is 500 x 1000 and try to use that as a texture map of any channel, it will automatically adjust to 1000x1000 (the 500 pixels will be pulled to fit 1000 pixels, since that is the largest size).

You can make the texture space 1:2 in ratio, but that will likewise distort normal maps.

Where this IS useful is when you want to create certain effects. You can assign a material to a mesh, then adjust how that material flows over the UV space. However, you would eventually bake the material to a texture map (1:1 ratio). This is especially useful for using Substances, for example.

So to amend my amendment, you can control how to project texture sand materials over UV space, but the space itself will always be a square.

Whew!

Sure, I agree with optimizing textures and not relying on the program to adjust it for you. However, you actually cannot change or (to my knowledge) control how UV space works. You can change how it projects (e.g. spherical, flat, box), but if you load up a texture, it will always fill the space at 100% the size of the UV space.

Slight correction to what I just said. Actually a significant correction. You CAN adjust the ratio of UV space. But to my knowledge, even if you adjust the ratio, it will fill that space at 100%. Unless you play with clipping options any such. However, that would require advanced control and is certainly not the default.

Hey there,

Very nice results with Crazy Bump! I have never used it, but I've heard good things.

Also, it's not that it changes the size or resolution of the image, it's just that the texture automatically fits into the a 1:1 square. UV space can be optimized for certain textures, but any texture will fit into it.

You can take a 1 x 1 pixel image, and it will fit into a UV space that is optimized for 4096 x 4096.

In short, UV space ignores resolution, and simply maximizes the texture space.

Sounds like good advice to me. Just wanted to avoid confusion, and clarify that normal maps do auto-adjust to fit a square space. Again, I'm not an expert, just offering my two cents.

I understand, I was using this as an opportunity to provide the poster -- and anyone else -- with possible solutions to common problems with normal maps. Using my personal experience.

I would recommend creating the normal maps at at least 2024 x 2024 resolution, and scaling down, rather than scaling up. We all know the problems with increasing an image size.

Also, since normal maps auto-scale into a 1:1 ratio, I suspect that the problem is an incorrect ratio. That is just my assumption. So scaling the normal map to fit the box will actually yield incorrect results, if this is the case.

Greetings,

I'm not sure what the exact problem is, or what your experience with normal maps are. You may be an expert, but for the sake of this post, I will assume that you are not. For the record, I am not an expert.

1) Remember to use standard normal map sizes (1024 x 1024, 2048 x 2048, 4096 x 4096). Normal maps will always size to a 1:1 ratio, so if you create a 1:2 ratio normal map (e.g. 1000 x 2000), it will not line up. SW000000p is correct that using the UV reference will provide a guideline. You want to fit the normal map within that square, and aligned to the proper coordinates within the UV reference.

2) Sometimes different software is geared towards different normal map settings. For example, you often have to flip the Green channel in Zbrush to get the normals to match certain software. Otherwise you'll get awkward seam issues.

3) World vs. Tangent coordinates. For 99% of issues (and 100% of the time in iClone), you will want export to use Tangent.

Hi all!
When I create a normal map for a texture (on a 2D flat surface, such as a floor), when applied in iclone the normal map is always offset and generally somewhat smaller than the texture, although as images they have the exact same dimensions. I can more or less correct the size manually, but is there a reason the applied normal maps are always slightly different? (tried this in a few different normal map creation programs, all with same results).